Weft Floats Scarf

Our woven Weft Floats Scarf may look complicated with its striking waffle weave and precise design, but this lovely scarf is anything but… The trick is simply threading a pick up stick through selected warp threads (just once when you warp the loom), then, as you weave, flipping the stick onto its edge on selected rows, creating an extra heddle and those distinctive dashes, aka floats!

To create this beautiful design, we used Schacht Spindle Company’s tabletop Cricket Loom, a weaving wonder roundly celebrated for its ease in every important category: learning, using, and storing. It’s small enough that you can bring it wherever you want and store it almost anywhere at all when you’re not using it.

For our Weft Floats Scarf, we used our Season Alpaca, a wonderful weaving yarn. Its smooth spin highlights details and textures beautifully, but its 100% baby alpaca content is gentle and squishy enough to soften the edges. Warp on with this exceptional yarn and create some floats!

Size

Notes

Cricket Loom Tips

Cricket Looms come with a very user-friendly instructional booklet that walks you through every step of the weaving process, from assembling the loom to tying the fringe. For even more guidance, check out our Cricket Loom Tips.

Placing And Using The Pick Up Stick

To create weft floats, you need to weave the pick up stick through the weft threads. Here’s how…

First, put the heddle in the down position. You will weave the pick up stick behind the heddle and only through the warp threads that are in the up position.

From the right, insert the pick up stick under the first up warp thread and over the second up warp thread, under the next up warp thread and over the next.

Continue weaving under and over the up warp threads until you have reached the last thread.

For Row 4 of the pattern, first put the heddle in the neutral position, so all the strings are lying flat and no shaft is open. Then turn the pick up stick so it is lying on one of its long edges, raising different warp threads in order to create the floats.

NOTE: These photos were taken on a 10-inch loom, not the 15-inch one we used to make our actual scarf.

Pattern

Warp The Loom

Set up the warping peg 98 inches from the side of the loom at the front edge of the table.

Tie the yarn to the back apron bar.

With an 8-dent reed in place, begin threading the heddle by pulling the first loop of yarn through the second slat from the right end of the reed.

Working from right to left, thread the next 56 slats so there are 57 slats threaded in total.

Tie the yarn to the back apron bar.

Wind on the warp using paper to separate the layers.

Working from right to left, thread the yarn through each of the holes on the heddle.

You should have a total of 114 warp threads.

Tie the warp threads on to the front apron bar in groups of 6.

Weave

Using scrap yarn, weave until the warp threads are evenly spread out, about 1 inch.

Wind a shuttle with the yarn you’re using to make your scarf.

Leaving a 36-inch tail, which you will use at the end for finishing, weave in plain weave for 1 1/2 inches, ending with a down-heddle row.

You can easily use this pattern for your 4 harness loom! The trick is to ignore your 3rd and 4th harnesses completely and thread harnesses 1 and 2 every other warp end so they are ready to weave plain weave
The “weft floats” can be created manually woven with the same technique in the Notes or you can use the 3rd harness to weave this row. Your harnesses would then be threaded in this order: 3-2-1-2
Row 1: lift harness 2
Row 2: lift harnesses 1 & 3
Row 3: lift harness 2
Row 4: lift harness 3

Thanks for reaching out! For this lovely pattern and all of our weaving patterns, we use a Cricket rigid heddle loom. As such, there are no harnesses to draw. We do have a handy page of tips to set up and weave on your Cricket Loom that can be found here: https://www.purlsoho.com/create/cricket-loom-tips/

Additionally, Schacht does provide and instruction manual with the loom that shows both how to assemble to loom but also how to warp them loom!

I started weaving this, but the patterning is not looking the same as in the images here. I am not getting the same vertical patterning. Am I reading this correctly? 3 picks plain weave, starting in the up position. Then 1 pick with the pattern stick? And the pattern stick is lifting every other warp end when the reed is in the down position? I am using a slightly finer yarn on a 10 dent reed. But there seems to be much more space between the weft floats than it appears in the photos here. Is it just a question of beating down more firmly? Please advise. Thanks.

Thanks for writing in! It sounds like you’re having an issue with the picks per inch. Using a finer yarn might be the cause of the issue. I would recommend beating the weft a little bit harder if there are gaps in the weft yarns.